Flexible personal itineraries for learners’ agency in digital environments

Agency has been generally defined as the ability to take control of one’s own decisions and choices, and in the educational context, it has been described from a sociocultural perspective, in which individual, relational and contextual sources of agency are defined. This is an aligned background to support students’ autonomy in flexible learning enhanced by designs such as personal itineraries. In this study, a pedagogical design based on flexible learning itineraries in digital environments is presented, and from a Design Based Research methodology, the second iteration is developed and analysed from participants’ perceptions on agency activation. Results suggest that students who perceive greater opportunities for choice and autonomy in their learning itinerary are also more likely to perceive their learning environments as supportive and resource-rich, both socially and materially.